Japanese Climb K2

By Dougald MacDonald
, Aug 9, 2004

Four members of a Japanese expedition and two Sherpa climbers summited K2 via the Abruzzi Spur on Saturday, Aug. 7, and returned to basecamp safely late Sunday evening. The team overcame many feet of fresh snow on the mountain and winds of 35 mph near the top, gusting to more than 50 mph during the descent. They fixed ropes nearly to the summit, and all but one member of the summit party used supplementary oxygen. The Japanese climb brings the number of K2 summits this extraordinary season to nearly 50. However, three climbers are now confirmed to have disappeared on the mountain as bad weather closed in after the summit rush of July 26-28. The Japanese started up the mountain hoping they might find two of the missing climbers, who had radioed to basecamp that they were attempting to descend from Camp 4 to Camp 3. But no sign of them was discovered. News courtesy of www.k2climb.net.